Why pay for an expensive SEO suite when you barely use it?
Full marketing and SEO platforms charge a high monthly subscription even when tasks like audits or keyword checks only happen a few times a quarter. Paying continuous top-tier pricing for infrequent use makes the software a massive waste of money that is hard to justify.
What the numbers show
Counted from the threads quoted below. How we count
- This comes up 54.4× more often in r/msp than across the site as a whole.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Running prompts manually by hand to check monitoring needsDid this help you?
- 2Testing trials heavily before committingDid this help you?
- 3Evaluating how often a task is actually performed before purchasing an appDid this help you?
- 4Experimenting with AI models like Claude to replace existing paid appsDid this help you?
- 5building custom internal tools using AI code generationDid this help you?
- 6using open source solutions instead of paid softwareDid this help you?
- 7Using alternative seating chart tools or free spreadsheetsDid this help you?
- 8manually tracking usage countsDid this help you?
- 9coordinating with account reps to adjust billing quantitiesDid this help you?
- 10renegotiating contractsDid this help you?
- 11Doing all the configuration and modifications independently using setup and AI as tech supportDid this help you?
- 12Trying to decide whether to leave the vendor platform and transition directly to the underlying enterprise softwareDid this help you?
- 13hoping for the best with unfamiliar toolsDid this help you?
- 14discarding or questioning vendor hypeDid this help you?
- 15Stopping to evaluate how often the problem happens and how much time the tool would actually saveDid this help you?
- 16Doing tasks manually instead of paying for automation toolsDid this help you?
- 17Building custom internal software for inventory and COGS trackingDid this help you?
- 18Switching between different third-party software platforms like MarketMan and xtraChefDid this help you?
- 19Building websites on alternative content management systems or cheaper web builders that support product catalogs and inquiry forms without e-commerce overheadDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“Running a small boutique has made me realize how quickly this can get out of hand.”source ↗
“They just solve problems that aren't big enough to justify another $20, $30, or $50 coming out of the account every month.”source ↗
“I’ve definitely fallen into this trap.”source ↗
“I don’t actually take payments or sell products directly through the website.”source ↗
“I’m now looking at building a few other websites for different ideas and I don’t really fancy paying €300+ per year for Shopify for every site when I’m not using the ecommerce side of it.”source ↗
“Yeah, I quickly learned that there is a whole economy of people (grifters) selling business solutions to business owners.”source ↗
“That being said, I just learned that ninja billing isn't automated. After learning this I checked my invoice and I'm being billed for about 50 more devices than I have.”source ↗
“It bills accurately and automatically if you ADD agents/seats/whatever, just not if you start using less.”source ↗
“We pay for 5000 endpoints. We've gone as high as 5200, as low as 4700. Bill did not change, evens out.”source ↗
“Now it's a bunch of "Deploy these toolsets nobody fully understands, pay outrageous subscription fees to keep them going, and hope for the best."”source ↗
“The "you will own nothing and be happy" era of MSPs and software licensing in general is exhausting.”source ↗
“I’m a Real Estate Investor with a small business of 10 employees currently using a Real Estate specific salesforce vendor. At best it feels like they’ve made some modifications and maybe an app or two specific to my niche but nothing major, really nothing that moves the needle at all in our business.”source ↗
“Most of the modifications we make nowadays are pretty much me going to set up and using ai as tech support.”source ↗
“If you're already basically doing all the config yourself and just using the vendor for their base package, you're paying a markup for stuff you're outgrowing”source ↗
“I was paying like $4 a month for a scarcity counter on the product pages, but my assistant was changing up the colors on the site and the scarcity counter was the same color as the background so you couldn’t even see it. I didn’t realize for like 6 months.”source ↗
“So instead of saving me meaningful time, I basically added another subscription to the store.”source ↗
“We dumped paying for an LCM tool and built our own to save hundreds of thousands on software, and we can modify it to our will at the ever changing needs of the business. We may replace our PAM as well with a custom built solution as frankly, we're paying hundreds of thousands for the current one.”source ↗
“we used to use marketman, then switched to xtra chef but found that we're paying like $500/month for a ton of fluff we don't really use... we ended up building our own and have been very happy with it.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 11Why does running an online store require paying for so many apps?
- 2Why can't I talk to a real person on enterprise software support?
- 3Why do we keep accidentally paying for software twice?
- 6How to bill clients for API costs and software licenses
- 3How to market paid software without a free version
- 3How to audit unused CRM customizations when the original builder leaves